The mythos of Eudemon…exploring the liminal spaces of Riverwest…meeting the ordinary folk and having a good time.

Eudemon finished brushing his teeth and paused for a moment of reflection in the mirror. He counted the gray hairs and found they numbered more than before. He wondered if his life was adding up to an acceptable sum and wondered who was counting. “Maybe I need a job? Must I be defined by a job?” Sort of; “What am I going to be when I grow up?” Today anyway, Eudemon seemed to be doing some counting. In his hometown, Roznov pod Radhostem, in the Czech Republic, people just were. They weren’t so defined by their work. But in America, you needed that job to justify yourself. Eudemon didn’t buy into that part of the culture, but still, was it enough to have good times in the bars, to taste the beer, listen to the music and have fun? Happiness is a good time? It was a beautiful late summer day and Eudemon, who actually had a job in a small corner grocery store, went about his day. You know, “How ya doing today? Would you like a bag? We’ve got fresh bananas. Thanks for comin’.” EudemonHe walked home after work and after having a bite to eat, decided to lie down under a tree in his backyard. Eudemon quickly fell into a deep sleep. Mysteriously, for some reason his eyes opened, and gazing up he saw looking down at him a hummingbird, motionless except for the blur of its wings. And then it was gone only to reappear ten feet away, moving from point to point in space by some calculus unknown. Eudemon had planted scarlet runner bean vines and the bright red flowers must have attracted this visitor running permanently on fast forward speed. Eudemon felt almost inanimate compared to this bird. His lumberings and ponderings at a snail’s pace compared to this bird with its racing heartbeat and split second decisions. And then it was gone. A butterfly flitted from flower top to flower top on the tall green-headed coneflowers in the yard. Eudemon gazed at the orange, seemingly care-free insect and, with a beat of its wings the image set Eudemon’s thoughts free. “Ah yes, how could I have forgotten, this is what I am here for, this is my job, to ponder the imponderables of nature and to be set free by them.” And Eudemon closed his eyes and dreamed of things very, very small and of things very, very large. His mind spiraled down to the subatomic level. He thought of bosons, those little quantum particles that flit about. He dreamt of a mini world of bosons. A boson circus with boson Bozos entertaining the kids and boson magician acrobats disappearing and instantly reappearing at the other end of the universe and boson cosmologists with giant ears pointed at empty spaces at the edge of time and space listening to the music of the big bang and boson physicists uncertain about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. And then his mind flew to the far reaches of the universe with an image of a thousand galaxies of a billion stars each spinning in space thousands of light years away from earth. Sator opera tenet rotas. The Creator’s works are held in vortices. Riverwest Currents – Volume 1 – Issue 8 – September 2002